David Corn, for those who don't know of him, is a writer. He used
to be a journalist. For a long, long time, he was seen by many on the
left as far too close to the CIA which led to speculation that he was
with the CIA -- at the very least in a Pamela Des Barres' I'm With The Band
kind of way. This speculation only grew as Corn did a superficial (and
fact-free) takedown of journalist Gary Webb's investigative series for
the San Jose Mercury News exposing the links between the CIA and the drug trade.

Corn always hopes to live down the Webb attack but never will. "Who Killed Gary Webb?" (Press Action) asked Jordy Cummings only to conclude, "David Corn and the Democratic establishment killed Gary Webb." Andres Kargar (From The Wilderness) wrote of David Corn while wondering about "A Mole in the Progressive Movement?"
He's attacked A.N.S.W.E.R., he's attacked 9-11 Truth, he's even
attacked KPFA and other Pacifica stations for the premium gifts they've
offered. You sort of picture him on the phone with customer service at
Snuggie insisting his Snuggie alone doesn't keep him warm in winter and
he thinks he deserves at least a partial refund even though the item was
purchased over three years ago.

This was addressed in April 21, 2008 "Iraq snapshot." A TV news producer read the snapshot and put us on three-way as he called Mother Jones -- he couldn't believe Mother Jones was
refusing to correct a basic mistake (by Corn) or that they would be
rude to people who pointed it out. He quickly found out that they did
refuse and that the woman answering the phone was "a nasty piece of
work." He never even got to identify himself, which was the whole point
of his call -- that and to prove us wrong. We were right. He'd planned
to use the recording to get a few laughs at our expense. Instead, it's
been used to get laughs at Corn and Mother Jones' expense and one of the main reasons so few in the news industry take Mother Jones seriously.

That mistake? Barack Obama, in an April 16th debate falsely claimed Bill
Clinton pardoned two members of the Weather Underground (Linda S. Evans
and Susan Rosenberg). The press ran with the lie. The morning of April
17th, when it was clear the press was not self-correcting on its own, we
wrote "There was no pardon, Barack."
We wrote that before David Corn got his sad sack ass out of bed. But
there he was, later that day, on the Hillary Clinton press conference
call, screaming like a banshee about the pardon. He then took to Mother Jones
to blog about the pardon. In fact, he would blog multiple times about
the pardon. Yet, as we'd noted early on, there was no pardon. David Corn
repeated the lies for days and days. This despite the fact that it only
took one time writing "Jake Tapper, correct your error" to get a correction from Tapper and ABC News. But then Tapper and ABC News are journalists who care about integrity. Mother Jones is seen by the real press as just a vanity make-work project for two bored women.

When it became a huge issue -- shortly after the news producer began playing the taped phone call with Mother Jones
refusing to correct their error -- the 'magazine' and Corn were finally
forced to sort-of self-correct. Some of his posts about the pardon
(that wasn't) got a little note attached, some didn't. The note never
admitted he was wrong (though he was really wrong):

Clarification: Clinton did not issue pardons to Rosenberg and
Evans; he commuted their prison sentences. Media accounts often conflate
the two different actions. These two commutations were announced by the
White House on January 20, 2001, as part of a long list of almost 140
pardons and commutations, which included the infamous pardon of fugitive
financier Marc Rich--which was a pardon.

Clarification? No, it required a correction. It wasn't one time Corn
wrote about it. He wrote about it repeatedly. In the words of an NBC
reporter, he acted like "a psycho" on the Hillary conference call as he
kept demanding answers (comments) on the pardon (that wasn't). Only
after there was a new topic in the news did Corn and Mother Jones issue there 'correction' and, even then, they refused to own their mistake, refused to even call it a mistake.

That's David Corn for you, a man who used to call out lies by others but
now spends more time lying himself and raving like a lunatic whose
family desperately needs to stage an intervention.

A journalist who can't correct themselves isn't much of a journalist. And we were reminded of just how far from journalism David Corn has strayed as we caught his stunts on The Diane Rehm Show. He'd
foamed at the mouth and bored us all long before Susan Page (guest
hosting) took a needed call. Most of the hour was spent with David
plugging the latest story someone else had found and handed him. This
time it was a grandson of former president Jimmy Carter who found a
video online of Mitt Romney speaking to donors and the grandson then
shopped it around before Mother Jones bit and grabbed the story.
Consider it Journalism Helper and David just added water (or milk if he
wanted a creamier sauce) to it.

Friday, December 9, 2016. Chaos and violence continue, the Mosul slog
continues, a KRG official tells the BBC that Iraq is a failed state, we
revisit War Hawk Hillary and the 2008 primary, and much more.

Debra Messing, you are a nut and a psycho.But I can understand your feelings of outrage because I had them in 2008.I was supporting Hillary.And she lost (or 'lost') to Barack.And the whole time we had to deal with sexism.We had to deal with Hillary nut crackers, we had to deal with talk of
her "pimp"ing out her daughter, we had men like Chris Matthews saying
that when they heard her voice, they had to cross their legs, etc.And some of us defended her.I started this blog for that reason.I used all my PTO days to go out and campaign for her in states that hadn't held their primaries yet.And so few would call out the sexism.Susan J. Douglas refused to call out the sexism.

We were upset.

But we didn't go around screaming that foreign governments had destroyed Hillary in the primary or any other such nonsense.

We did talk about the gross sexism. We called it out as it was
happening and we refused to let it just fade away with
by-gones-be-by-gones.

Because of those actions -- and that was not just the people in our
community who have sites as well as Riverdaughter, and so many others --
Hillary didn't face the sexism that she did in 2008.

The actions thousands of us took in 2008 forced the media to finally
acknowledge what had happened -- except for columnists Marie Cocco and
Bonnie Erbe, the media ignored it during the primary -- and then we had
Howard Dean playing dumb to THE NEW YORK TIMES about what went down.

I contrast that with the whimpering, cry baby crowd of today who rests
their hopes on recounts, then on persuading the electors in the
electoral college, then on . . .

It's insanity. It's even worse when you don't know what happened and link to KOS or Bill Moyers or whatever piece of crap.

If
you doubted it, you missed what followed Couric calling out sexism. An
intense effort to play dumb, attack or stay silent. On Friday, The New York Times
went with with the first tactic. In a long article that said very
little (no women in broadcast or cable news were sought out for the
story), Katharine Q. Seelye and Julie Bosman offer "Critics and News Executives Split Over Sexism in Clinton Coverage."
Heavy on featuring men (all quotes on the front page are from men) and
short on women. All women featured show up late in the story (and inside
the paper where it continues). Among the tiny number featured is one
our readers know very well, Dr. Kathy:

"Largely,
the problem was on cable and in the blogosphere and on the Internet,
and that's a relatively small audience," said Kathleen Hall Jamieson,
director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of
Pennsylvania. "But while it was limited, it was limited to influential
people."

Oh, Dr. Kathy, we try to be
nice. We tried. But as Staci Lattisaw once suggested, "Nail It To The
Wall." "It" would be your ass, Dr. Kathy. Dr. Kathy lied to The New York Times and let's deal with that 1first. "Relatively small audience," she insisted last week. Well, golly, what did she say in May?

"Secondly,
we know something about how the electorate is using the new media
environment," Dr. Kathy told Bill Moyers on May 2nd. "Meaning lots of
cable channels that you have an option to go to, even when you're
watching traditional, mainstream broadcast. People aren't watching 30
minutes of NBC or CBS or ABC anymore. There's a whole part of the
electorate that is watching a segment of it. It gets what it needs of
politics, and it starts to channel-surf to find other political
information. And over a third of the electorate says, it's done that at
least once or twice in this most recent viewing experience."

To
the paper last week, she insisted "the problem" (what is it, vaginal
odor -- she can't say "sexism"?) was exposed to a "very small audience."
Yet last month, on PBS, she was stating one-third of the electorate
(ONE THIRD!) was utilizing cable channels and the web for information.
Dr. Kathy has always struggled to build a relationship with the truth.
The two remain estranged.

During the primary campaign, Dr. Kathy was brought on frequently as an 'expert' by Bill Moyers (to his Bill Moyers Journal
-- which airs on the non-cable PBS and has a very large audience). On
one of those segments (January 9th), Senator Hillary Clinton 'crying'
was addressed. Hillary didn't cry but Dr. Kathy felt the need to bring
that moment up and, 'expert' that she is, she credits it with Hillary's
success in New Hampshire despite the fact that late breaking voters
identified their reasons for going with Clinton as the Saturday debate.
From the transcript of the January 9th broadcast:

KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: But that's not the whole story. In the Hillary moment, characterized very differently by people-BILL MOYERS: The moisty moment?KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: Well, whatever adjective or adverb you use, Hillary Clinton has this moment in the diner.BILL
MOYERS: The national press was cynical. Clinton is hoping that showing
that other side will bring women in particular to the polls, almost as
if she had done it deliberate. We don't know whether she did or not. But
the two significant newspapers in New Hampshire didn't cover the event
at all. And local television coverage in New Hampshire was pretty matter
of fact about it. It became a bigger national story than it did a local
story.KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: Mm-hm. But what's also interesting to me is you're not sure whether she did it deliberately or not.

What's
interesting to us is that 'expert' Dr. Kathy brought it up on her own,
interjected it and didn't know what the hell she was talking about.
What's interesting to us is that Bill Moyers calls it a 'moisty' moment
-- oh, ha, ha, you are so very funny.

But along with trying to be funny, he also likes pranks. The same episode.

JESSE JACKSON, JR.: We saw a sensitivity factor…But there are a lot of issues for which we can be emotion on this campaign.

That's how the transcript 'plays' that moment. It is not how it played on TV. (And we called it out in real time.) The "..." was not used on PBS, Jackson's actual words (aired on MSNBC) were. Dr. Kathy wants to tell The New York Times
it was the bad world of blogs and the bad world of cable. But Moyers
played Jackson entire sexist attack on Hillary. (Watch the episode
online if you doubt us.)

And Dr. Kathy? Not a word. Brought on as an 'expert.' Moyers plays the sexist attack on Hillary and Dr. Kathy responds?

BILL MOYERS: What do you think?KATHLEEN
HALL JAMIESON: Much of the commentary about that moment is simply a
Rorschach read on people's ideological relationship to Hillary Clinton.
The question for the electorate at large is: Does it speak to her
capacity to lead? It's the same question that one should ask of
everything one sees of candidates.

Jackson
has just falsely lied and attacked Clinton in sexist terms and Dr.
Kathy doesn't address that. She doesn't point out that he's lying when
he says she cried about her appearance and she certainly doesn't point
out that he had a chunk of his intestines removed to lose fifty pounds
-- so who is he to accuse anyone else of vanity?

Dr.
Kathy just let it skirt on by. Dr. Kathy can insist it was 'cable, all
cable!' But people like Bill Moyers amplified it by replaying on
non-cable and Dr. Kathy was present for that. And it should be noted
that journalists know the difference between primary and secondary
sources. Meaning? Bill Moyers should explain why he REFUSED to play
Clinton's moment but was happy to air an attack on that moment while
pretending he wanted to address the moment. But Dr. Kathy was present
and she didn't call out the lies or the sexism. She just called it a
"Rorschach read." Dr. Kathy, you're an embarrassment.

Don't
believe us? Check over her various visits 'explaining' what was what to
Moyers. Dr. Kathy, even when Hillary won New Hampshire, never attempted
to portray it as anything for women to take pride in or to connect it
to the centuries old and ongoing women's movement. But golly, bi-racial
Barack was to be connected to history.

Check
out the babble from the January 4th broadcast, after Barack won Iowa,
"echo of Martin Luther King, Jr." (Dr. Kathy), MLK and Moses (Moyers),
"Civil Rights movement" (Dr. Kathy), "Selma and Montgomery" (Dr. Kathy),
"father from Kenya" (Dr. Kathy), "transcend the racial divide" (Dr.
Kathy), "unification" (Dr. Kathy), "Obama changes the metaphor; because
King took his people to the mountain, Obama can take them somewhere
else" (Moyers and, yes, it is racist as well as laughable since Barack's
bi-racial and made no promises to America's Black community), and
that's all from one appearance. In that appearance she also casts
Hillary "as the establishment" -- Dr. Kathy would argue she said the
press did but Dr. Kathy was brought on to 'see beyond' the press spin as
Moyers stated ("Her calling is to mine the facts hidden in all the
spin," Jan. 11th, BMJ)) and she didn't question and certainly
didn't point out that Barack, first entering the Illinois state
legislature in 1995, was no political virgin.

Speaking to The New York Times,
Dr. Kathy left out the fact that whatever happens on cable is amplified
elsewhere. She seemed to 'forget' Jackson's MSNBC attack was re-played
by Moyers on PBS and that she was present for it and that she didn't
call out. She forgets a lot.

Don't pretend that 2016 was rough for Hillary.

And don't pretend that she was an innocent.

She never should have used private e-mail and a private server.

That's only one of her problems.

She lost Marcia, Ava and myself (among others) because her remarks about
her "mistake" on Iraq? She amplified them after her failed run. Her
mistake? To think Bully Boy Bush would send enough troops to Iraq.

That was her mistake.

In 2008, she finally said "mistake," okay, maybe she can learn from her
mistakes. We knew Barack was for the war (he told Elaine and I that at
his Senate run fundraiser). The illegal war matters. If Hillary could
learn from her mistake, we could support her.

But it was just more spin in 2008. We learned that when she was
Secretary of State. And she did nothing to help Iraqi women -- even
with own friends imploring her to help them. And she wanted war in
Syria. And she advocated and got war on Libya.

She's a War Hawk.

Yesterday, wearing make up (which idiots will decide this 'new look' is a
feminist statement?), she wanted to call out Fake News.

Despite Barack calling, June 19, 2014, for a political solution, none has been reached -- or for that matter attempted.

From yesterday's State Dept press briefing moderated by spokesperson Elizabeth Trudeau:QUESTION: The – Masrour Barzani, the chancellor, of the
Kurdistan Region Security Council, just gave a talk at the Wilson
Center, and he said – he remarked that before there was ISIS there was
al-Qaida in Iraq, and after ISIS there’s likely to be something else
unless we get this right. What he said was that the root cause of this
radicalism was a political failure in Iraq. What would be your comment
on that observation? Would you tend to agree or you think it’s not --MS TRUDEAU: I wouldn’t speak to the chancellor’s remarks. That
would be for him to explain that. I would say that we continue to stand
with the people of Iraq. We have been very supportive of the reforms
that this government has continued to advance through their legislative
process. We believe in a democratic, unified Iraq. We think that’s the
future of the country.I’d also note, though, too, that they have made enormous gains
fighting [the Islamic State]. We never said that this would be an easy fight, but we
are really seeing progress on the ground.QUESTION: Because something else not only he, but others –
many others have said is there’s been so much bloodshed and it’s still
very immediate in people’s minds, in their hearts, that it’s impossible
for people to go back to what existed before because they don’t trust –
one element doesn’t trust another. Is that something you – you’re – a
perspective you’re sympathetic to?

MS TRUDEAU: I think we’re sympathetic to the idea that the
people of Iraq have certainly suffered. They’ve suffered under [the Islamic State].
They suffered under the range of violent extremism within their own
country. However, we have faith in the people of Iraq. We continue to
believe that they’re making significant progress.

[. . .]

QUESTION: Just a follow-up on that issue.MS TRUDEAU: Sure.QUESTION: I mean, you talked about the Iraqi people suffering
from al-Qaida and ISIS and they – but they also suffered in the war and
occupation and so on, and what was missing – I mean, I remember being
there for so long – what was missing is national reconciliation. What is
missing today in this dialogue is national reconciliation. After all,
the current prime minister is of the same party as the former prime
minister. What is being done? What is the United States and – or your
Administration in its final weeks doing to sort of reignite a path for
national reconciliation?

MS TRUDEAU: Well, I think we have seen progress. We have seen
important steps taken on reform. We have seen efforts made across
sectarian lines. We’re not saying the work is done. I don’t think for
any of us in any of the countries, including my own, work is ever done
on this. But we do recognize when progress has been made, Said.

All the money spent continuing the Iraq War and there's no progress at all.

The Islamic State came to power because of conditions in Iraq -- such as the persecution of the Sunnis. Having failed to address that issue, something else will surely follow the Islamic State -- if or when it's ever defeated.

Robert J. Barsocchini (COUNTERCURRENTS) observes:Fake news propagated by the US government and collaborating organizations such as the New York Times and Washington Post helped
create an environment in which the US was able to illegally invade Iraq
in 2003, killing at least one million and possibly upwards of two
million people, including the deaths of some 4,500 US soldiers,
according to a meta-study by Nobel-winning Physicians for Social
Responsibility.Just this November, nearly 6,000 people were killed in
Iraq thanks to the conflicts that are still raging due to the invasion
(which is ongoing), and it was not an atypical month – even more were
killed in October.Regarding the fake news that laid the groundwork for the US war of aggression, award-winning journalist Robert Parry notes that, for example, Judith Miller of NYT and Washington Post
editorial page editor Fred Hiatt “repeatedly stated the ‘fact’ of
Iraq’s hidden WMD as flat fact and mocked anyone who doubted the ‘group
think.’”

Parry also traces the use of fake news by these outlets and the
government to the present, raising interesting legal questions about
whether and how the individuals who perpetrate fake news should be
punished, and to what extent they are protected by the US first
amendment.

Meanwhile, Iraq "has failed to be a fair governor for all." That's the call made by the Kurdistan Regional Government's Deputy Prime Minister Qubad Talabani who appeared on today's BBC HARDTALK. We'll note this section of the interview.Qubad Talabani : We have not been shy about talking to Iraq, talking to our partners in the west about our aspirations and about the aspirations of our people who, by and large, want to be independent. I think that's a natural right for the Kurds, it's a -- it's a historic right for the Kurds. And it's a historic injustice that today the Kurds do not have a state of their own. But the fact that we are talking to Baghdad about this issue, the fact that we will negotiate any independence process with Baghdad --Stephen Sackur: Ah Qubad Talabani (Con't): -- should allay the fears with any --Stephen Sackur: Well --Qubad Talabani (Con't): -- with any countries nearby or far away that could be concerned about that potential eventuality.Stephen Sackur: -- Interesting. You use an elegant politician's device there of saying two different things. One you said talk to Baghdad and two you say end negotiations. You could talk to Baghdad Qubad Talabani : It's a process[cross-talk]Qubad Talabani : It's a process. It's not a declaration --Stephen Sackur: Isn't it?Qubad Talabani :There will not be a unilateral declaration.